A "job offer"

I was a fairly high level employee in the past. In a company of 3000+ I was four heads away from the CEO. Not saying I was four positions from being the CEO – but I was four heads away from talking to the CEO. In fact, I often talked to the CEO directly, even though it meant going over my bosses heads. They knew it when I did it (in fact, they often encouraged it).

So today I got a job offer – it was a very nice position with a known company. The salary was of course more than I could hope for. Paid auto, paid this, paid that.

Forgetting the fact that I have two children in High School, and can’t move, I had other considerations. I shared them with the potential employer. I won’t give you their responses, just my questions. They were far to nice to me for me to publicly humiliate them. But you can assume by the fact I turned the position down that they didn’t have good answers to the questions.

1) Would you rather talk to a happy advertiser or a disgruntled customer?

2) Do you consider Press Releases to be “communicating with your customers”?

3) If you have an “open door” policy, does that extend to customers?

4) Are their any customer advocates on your Board of Directors?

5) Do you think that building a brand relies on building a community?

I won’t/can’t go into much more detail on this now, but basically I’ve done my time in big impassioned and impersonal companies. I would rather not make money than make money that way again.

This company (an old-school company) just doesn’t get that there is a shift inrelationship between companies and customers. Customers will no longer settle for “the basics”. Customers expect more, and have a voice that they never had before.

If you run a company, old-school or new, and you *really* want to engage your customers in your business – if you want to take advantage of their collective wisdom, if you want to bring customers into your decision making processes – then call me. I want to help a company that is willing to become partners with their customers, no matter how large or small that customer is – they all have a voice, and you should hear it.

The Internet is a powerful tool/weapon for consumers, and your customers. That voice can work for you, or against you. Social networking will change big business – if it hasn’t already it will soon.

There is no reason that big business cannot change in a positive way and adopt the inevitable – even embrace it. Those companies that decide now to change to a more open and customer friendly format will do well. The rest will wither and die on the vine. It may take a number of years, but it will happen.

We should continue this argument over a beer. It’s late and I need some sleep: Just ONE remark about my company not being considered an alternative unless we are in a very niche market…
I wouldn’t call the cell phone industry a niche market. Nor digital camera’s, printers and barcode scanners.

I argue that you are wrong – first, you work in a chip company that was once the premier in it’s field – now it is not even a considered alternative, unless you are in a very niche market. Why? Because we treated our customers like crap, and they never forgot that. I know – I was the guy on the bleeding edge of that sword. While you were off wondering why I wanted you to move a feature up, or fix a bug, I was the guy the customers saw as “failing them”. And I did. I let them down. I let Development and Marketing set a release/priority schedule that SHOULD HAVE BEEN SET BY OUR CUSTOMERS. We just refused to listen to them.

As for Belkin/Linksys – I know for a fact that there is a 20-30% return rate to stores on WLAN equipment. THAT has to cost a LOT. Probably more than good customer support would cost them – so they have made their bed – they are CHOOSING this path. It’s not like they don’t have alternatives.

Neither of these companies have EVER invested in customers, so they have no mechanism for even measuring customer support costs vs. benefits. They just assume there will be another sucker walking in the door tomorrow…

It all sounds wonderful, but I’m pessimistic. It also depends heavily on the kind of businesses you’re talking about. For some it probably would pay off big time (I’m thinking of the retail section), for others, being ‘customer centric’ is simply too expensive. You can’t expect Belkin or Linksys to spend an hour with you on the phone trying to get your $10 (after mail in rebate) wireless gateway to work. And for chip makers .. well, let me tell you: I once was in a conference call where a guy barked to a big customer in Taiwan to “SHUT UP and have your boss call me back!” And this was not some lowly employee, he was a manager. Four heads away from the CEO! 😉